Chelsea Clinton talks bullies, social media trolls and kindness in book promotion stop in Boulder

By John Bear

Staff Writer

Posted:
10/25/2018 10:14:23 PM MDT

Updated:
10/25/2018 10:15:05 PM MDT

Chelsea Clinton reacts to the crowd at she receives a standing ovation as she takes the stage Thursday. Clinton spoke and signed copies of her book, "Start Now! You Can Make a Difference" at Unity of Boulder Church. (Paul Aiken / Staff Photographer)

When Chelsea Clinton was in elementary school, her father, Bill, was the governor of Arkansas, so a duo of bullies grabbed her and stuffed her inside a locker as an experiment or "mean-spirited curiosity" as she puts it.

"They wanted to see if the state police would come," Clinton told a full house at Unity of Boulder Church on Thursday evening.

Clinton, 38, was in Boulder to promote her latest children's book, "Start Now! You Can Make a Difference," which offers insights into the environment, health and, yes, bullying.

Clinton said the state police never arrived that day, and she tapped on the inside of the locker until a teacher came and let her out.

"I didn't tell my second-grade teacher that they put me in the locker," Clinton said. "I was ashamed that I had let it happen. Of course I didn't let it happen. There were more of them and they were stronger."

She said regrets not telling a "trusted adult" about the bullying, but she didn't know at the time that the bullies were in the wrong, not her.

That revelation didn't strike until a few years later when her father sought the highest office in the land, and the people being mean were all old enough to rent cars.

"When my dad ran for president, I was made fun of a lot, generally for my appearance," Clinton said. "I had frizzy hair. I wore glasses sometimes and I had braces. It was quite mean and quite vicious. And it was almost entirely from adults."

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Talk radio host Rush Limbaugh infamously joked that when the Clintons moved into the White House, they would bring their cat, Socks, and their dog, Chelsea. Her appearance also was mocked in a Saturday Night Live sketch.

Clinton now jokes that the abuse was "bipartisan," but added that those type of jokes changed her view on bullying. She knew that she wasn't the one with the problem.

"Who were these adults, generally older white men, who were commentators or so-called comedians," she said. "What happened to them when they were 12 that they thought it was OK to make fun of a 12-year-old? ... I felt badly that they were so broken they thought it was funny."

That was in the 1990s, and as social media has since turned the internet into a sewer of incivility, Clinton, always in the public eye, has had to adapt to it. She said she used to ignore "trolls" in an effort to keep from giving them "oxygen" or a platform, but she has come to regard that as unproductive.

"I think that ignoring it helped shield a lot of people from understanding how awful it was and how nasty it was," she said. "I worry that it was it was taken as complacency, as if somehow I thought that was OK."

She added that she engages trolls — not all of them as that would be exhausting — but always in a polite, kind manner. In a tweet on Thursday afternoon, Clinton appears to thank a troll for helping remind her of how much fun she had watching the Kentucky Derby with her grandmother.

The original tweet, has since vanished and the account has been deleted.

"I do engage, but always politely and with kindness," she said. "I don't have an issue calling out racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia and any other bigotry that is often way too viral online. I don't think naming that and calling it out is uncivil. I think it's actually the definition of civility to say this is unacceptable."

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